Notre Dame heads into its extended preparation for the ACC Championship Game against Clemson with no new major injuries and no new positive COVID-19 tests.
For the third straight week, all tests came back negative. And injuries suffered during Saturday's win over Syracuse are minor.
Brian Kelly said linebacker Bo Bauer has a contusion resulting from a sideline collusion and no ligament or structure damage. He's expected to practice Wednesday. Punt returner Matt Salerno tweeted he had no lasting head injury after a helmet-to-helmet hit.
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Backup quarterback Brendon Clark was dressed but unavailable Saturday, sporting a knee brace on the sideline. He will continue to wear it, Kelly said.
“Brendon had ACL surgery in high school and the knee has been cranky," Kelly said. "The knee brace is to give him more stability through the rest of the season. He’ll get evaluated at the end of the season as to whether there needs to be a procedure cleaning it up or a reassessment of where he's at."
Here are some of the other topics Kelly addressed in his Monday Zoom media session.
On Ian Book As A Runner
“We have very few designed runs for Ian. Part of who he is, you’re going to get some runs from him within the offense. We’ve called some pass plays that have run opportunities in them if he doesn’t like what he sees. It has gone the opposite way for us in terms of designing the run game. In some instances, he has the opposite of an RPO. He has the PRO, pass-run option.”
On Open Week Plans
“This bye week will be different in the way we handle it than the last bye week. We gave the guys time off on the back end of (the last one) leading into the week of preparation (for North Carolina). That was primarily because we felt like rest was the most important thing.
“Rest is not necessarily the most important thing (this week). They’ve been away from the classroom. They’re getting eight, nine hours sleep. They’re in the training room. We want to get back in the weight room. We want to get back into a disciplined environment relative to our preparation. We want to maintain our routine as best as possible. That’s really the most important thing.
"Today and Wednesday, we’ll weight train. We’ll give them Tuesday off. Thursday, Friday and Saturday will be three days of preparation. We’ll tackle Saturday. We want Saturday to feel like a game operation.”
On The Clemson Offense’s Differences With Trevor Lawrence Instead Of D.J. Uiagalelei
“Not much. The system is the system they run. There may be a little bit more activation of quarterback runs. But the scheme up front, we’re well aware of what that is in terms of quarterback runs. Just being a little locked into some quarterback runs would be the only slight difference.”
On Making The ACC Title Game
“This has been the impetus for them to make all the sacrifices they have made to get to this point. Living through this pandemic has been very difficult. This is really what they’ve been chasing, the opportunity to win an ACC championship and a national championship. Exciting, absolutely. This is what they have been shooting for since the first time the university decided to open up campus.”
On The ACC Helping Notre Dame’s Playoff Chances
“We got a matchup with a team that’s camped out in the playoffs with Clemson. When you’re looking at your schedule and you know Clemson is on it, and now you have an opportunity to join the ACC, it puts you at a pretty good position because we were able to keep our schedule together by the ACC being gracious enough to bring us in this year. With Clemson on it, it all fell together really nicely.
"Those are the two pieces. We had Clemson on the schedule, then getting the invitation to come into the ACC, you then start thinking this could work out pretty nicely where they’re coming to Notre Dame in November. The only dream that didn’t come together was hoping for 18 degrees and snow.”
On Training Camp Signs Of Being Great
“Because we had the ability to control the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball, that gave us a chance. We had to establish the playmakers on Saturday. I saw the playmaking ability in practice, but that doesn’t do it for you. You have to see it on Saturday. For me, it was how are we going to take this confidence they display against each other and get them to display it against somebody wearing a different jersey.
"Once I started to see that in bits and pieces, I felt like we could have a special team. That really didn’t start to show itself until Florida State, where they started to make the plays they make in practice in the game.”
On His Biggest Surprise Of The Season
“The gameday atmosphere is the one thing I wasn’t certain how that was going to play out. As coaches, we’re going to prepare the same way, our preparation, we’re crazy about preparation and how we do things. The one wild card is what’s it going to be like when you run into a stadium that normally has 75,000 people in it. Now it has 10,000.
"How does your team respond? What’s it feel like? That was probably the biggest thing for me. It felt OK. It wasn’t the same. It didn’t feel like it was totally out of place. This weekend was a little different not having the students there and not having the band there.
“I didn’t know what was going to happen, but we were going to make it work. At Boston College, that was probably the most difficult because there was nobody there at all. I thought our guys did a really good job of staying locked in and focused.”
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